Chapter 14
Scully couldn’t stop thinking about the caves. It was burned into the backs of her eyelids, the caged-animal look that Mulder had in his eyes-- he was so terrified.
Mulder had fallen asleep shortly before, but she stayed next to him, stroking his hair. Something about leaving him felt so unbelievably wrong. He had fallen asleep almost clutching onto her, his face red from the punch. It wasn’t the best decision, really, to punch him. But she’d panicked… the way he was hyperventilating and shaking, like he was going under or something.
Scully knew that whatever happened she wasn’t going to let this boy lose himself. It didn’t make sense, the strange bond they had, him tortured by the present and Scully tortured by the past. But she wasn’t going to let him go.
She tried to push her dad out of her mind. In Mulder’s desperate search for Samantha, her panic, she saw her mother. A woman who didn’t want to believe but would do anything to find her husband. Scully remembered her mother on the floor, crying, begging to God to bring him back.
Dad had been a believer in those sorts of things. He loved to read articles in the paper on so-called “Sasquatch sightings” when they traveled in the family camper. He collected newspaper clippings and taped the programs on “proof” of some urban legend.
It made him so unbelievably happy, the belief in something more, something supernatural beyond him. He had those cheesy shirts proclaiming that he wanted to believe and despite the flack he got from Mom, he never stopped believing.
Maybe that’s why mom hated it so much. Because something dad loved could’ve been the thing that took him away from us.
Scully sat back from Mulder. In his sleep, he made a small sound and rolled onto his other side.
I can’t let him be alone. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this…
Scully sat back and closed her eyes, letting the weight of the experience, the day, the emotions, fall over her like a weight. Her chest felt so heavy, with all of this.
She barely knew any of these people, and now she was sitting in Frohike’s basement on his really old -- but really comfortable -- couch. Everything that had happened today, the desert, the caves, felt like she’d seen it from a different person’s eyes. Someone else had moved her legs through that caves, had punched Mulder, had sat with him until he fell asleep.
It made her feel better, to imagine that this was just her watching another movie, another documentary on UFOs… this wasn’t her life. This was someone else’s weird frameshift. She’d gone from losing someone to falling into a mess of conspiracy and things she didn’t understand or even really believe in, at all. It felt like too much.
Scully kept her eyes clothes, pondering how the universe through a telescope was so big, yet so small, and how she wished she could watch this part of her life from far away, through a spyglass, how much better that would feel. She just wanted to get away, from all of it. From thinking about Dad, from Fox Mulder and his tears and his unending belief and his fear.
She didn’t want to run away from this, but she didn’t belong here. She didn’t believe in this stuff.
Eventually the weight of exhaustion overtook her and her busy, overwhelmed thoughts, and she fell asleep.
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Fox Mulder’s nightmares were barely coherent.
The drip, drip, dripping off a stalactite into a pool made of darkness, deeper by every moment. The darkness all-consuming and eating everything surrounding it, swallowing the cave, the walls, him,
And a girl screaming --
Samantha screaming.
But the water was too deep to swim out, no place to go but up. The water was rising too fast, reaching the top of the cave, swallowing him, swallowing the world.
And the screaming, still the screaming.
He awoke, cold from the fan blowing above him. There was a weight on his stomach, and when he sat up enough, he could see it was Scully asleep on him, her hair draped across his midsection.
She looked pretty that way, the fiery element of her personality lost in her sleep. She stirred slightly, nestling further into him.
Mulder felt his heart flutter, just slightly.
Dana Scully, asleep on him, in Frohike’s basement.
The world became more out of tune everyday. The truth didn’t seem to exist anymore. It was like every truth Mulder had known had shifted just slightly to the left, just tilting the appearance of the world.
Dana Scully, asleep on him, in Frohike’s basement.
Samantha was gone, there was a fetus in the desert, her bracelet was in a cave… This wasn’t the world. This was a dream state. The camera of life just a little bit out of focus.
Mulder felt sick. He tried to shift as not to wake Scully up, but it was unsuccessful. He scooted past her and went straight for the bathroom. He stood in front of the dirty mirror, splashing water on his face. Splotchy skin. Messy hair. Red mark on his right cheek.
She does throw a good right hook.
There was a creaking behind him, and Scully opened the bathroom door. Her eyes were foggy with sleep, and she stood back, surprised. “Oh, sorry. I’ll give you a moment.”
When Mulder left the bathroom, she was standing outside, a little more awake than before. “You stayed.”
“I stayed.”
Mulder couldn’t formulate any words to say to the girl that had punched him and then fallen asleep on him, all in the same day.
Scully yawned. “Are you gonna, or-?”
Mulder realized he was still standing in the doorway of the bathroom. “Oh. Yeah, sorry.”
When she came back out, her hair was fixed a litte. Less messy with sleep.
“I’m sorry for punching you, I-”
“Nah. It’s okay, Dan- ah, shit. Scully. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who would’ve had the balls to do that. I respect you for it.”
“Oh.” She made a surprised face. Scully opened her mouth to say something, but held back. “Mulder, can we talk about everything in the morning? I don’t wanna seem like a bitch or anything. I just… I’m beyond exhausted.”
This made Mulder smile. “Yeah. That’s fine with me.”
He sat on the couch and Scully took back her position on the floor.
“You can’t sleep down there. That’s beyond ridiculous.”
Scully looked slightly offended. “I already did it!”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have let that happen then, either.” He adjusted so that she could sit next to him, his legs half folded. She reluctantly obeyed, half curling into him.
Scully rested her head on his shoulder.
“There’s just too much happening in the world right now for my neurons to comprehend.”
Mulder nodded. “I get what you mean.”
“Goodnight, Mulder.”
“Goodnight, Scully.”